The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday expanded children's privacy rules by prohibiting online ad networks from using anonymous cookies to collect data from visitors to sites directed to children younger than 13. The new rules, which effectively ban the use of behavioral targeting techniques on sites directed to young children, are part of the FTC's long-awaited update to the Childrens' Online Privacy Protection Act. That law bans Web site operators from knowingly collecting personal data from children under 13 without their parents' consent, but tasks the FTC with defining terms like "personal information" and "web site operator." The FTC's final regulations broaden the definition of personal information to include data used by ad networks to create behavioral profiles, including persistent cookies and mobile device identifiers. The definition also now includes IP addresses, geolocation data and photos of children. In another expansion, the FTC also said that "Web site operators" include not only publishers, but also third parties like ad networks and services with social plug-ins. The parental consent rules only apply at Web sites directed to children under 13, or if ad networks and other third parties know that they're collecting information from children. In that respect, the final rules significantly scaled back from an earlier proposal that would have banned ad networks and other third parties from collecting data when they had "reason to know" that users were under 13. Some lawyers say that the retreat from the "reason to know" standard is good news for online companies. "The rules are not as broad as they previously pondered," says Greg Boyd, a Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz partner who represents interactive entertainment and new media clients. At the same time, the rules also appear to impose new policing requirements on publishers of childrens' sites, which now must prevent third parties from dropping cookies or collecting other data without parents' permission. "All of the kids' sites are now going to have to spend more time, energy and money in taking appropriate steps to monitor and oversee and audit and ensure against third-party misbehavior," says attorney John Feldman, a Reed Smith partner who focuses on advertising and consumer protection law at the firm Reed Smith. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said on Wednesday that the new regulations "close a loophole" that allowed companies to collect data from children through plug-ins. "Advertisers and even advertising networks can continue to advertise on sites directed to children," Leibowitz said. He added that the only limit the FTC has placed on advertisers and networks is that they can't engage in online behavioral advertising. "Unless and until you get parental consent, you may not build massive profiles," he said. The regulations specify that ad networks and other companies can continue to collect data from child-directed sites, as long as the information is used for matters like contextual advertising, frequency capping, and site analysis. The FTC also specified that platforms like Google Play and the App Store are not liable if they offer child-directed apps that violate the new rules. Leibowitz said that those app stores aren't covered because they're not aimed at children, but at a general audience. Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen dissented from the new rules. She objected to the portion of the regulations that would impose liability on publishers when third parties collect data from the publishers' sites. Industry groups like the Interactive Advertising Bureau had opposed the changes. They said the FTC wasn't empowered to define personal information as cookies, arguing that cookies identify devices, not individual users. But a coalition of watchdogs and privacy groups, including the Center for Digital Democracy, urged the FTC to ban behavioral targeting of children. Jeff Chester, executive director of the organization, praised the updates. “We are especially gratified that this decision puts to rest the longstanding and disingenuous claims by the digital marketing industry that cookies and other persistent identifiers are not personally identifiable information," he stated.
In a bid to help clients better manage their ad buying across all screens Aegis Group has formed a new global unit called Amplifi. It will be headed by company veteran John Murray. London-based Aegis also said it was forming a new supervisory board called the Network Brand Board that is tasked with driving enhancements at the company’s major agencies, including media shops Carat and Vizeum, digital agency Isobar, search specialist, iProspect and out-of-home agency Posterscope. Nigel Sharrocks, CEO Global Brands at the holding company, has been named chairman of the new board. Areas of focus for the Brand Board include brand positioning, global client management and new business, the company said. The company also said that several senior executives were being promoted and added to the new brand board, including Doug Ray, North American President of Carat, who has been elevated to global president of the agency. In his new role, Ray will continue to report to Aegis Media North American CEO Nigel Morris for Carat North America activities. He will also report to Sharrocks for matters related to his new global duties, an Aegis Group rep said. Jerry Buhlmann, CEO, Aegis Group, stated that it was critical to "develop our structure, our brands and our people to ensure that we provide the very best service to our clients." According to the company, the new Amplifi Group is charged with bringing a “consistent and global approach to paid-for-display media investment across all screens: TV, PC, laptop, mobile and tablet.” It will focus on trading, data management, media partnerships and real-time bidding. John Murray, who assumes the title of president Amplifi Global, will continue to oversee the company’s global trading desk Amnet. In his Amplifi role, Murray will work with regional leaders on global investment issues and initiatives. “The country and regional management still retain responsibility for their own business, but link into [Murray], whose role is a coordinating one globally,” the rep said. Also promoted to new roles were: Thomas Le Thierry, director of projects for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, appointed president Vizeum Global; Rob Murray, CEO iProspect U.S.-appointed president iProspect Global, and Sue Frogley, chief commercial officer, global clients, appointed president, commercial operations. Those executives, along with Posterscope Global CEO Annie Rickard and Isobar Global CEO Mark Cranmer, were also named members of the Network Brand Board.
Continuing to break records, domestic online ad revenues reached $9.2 billion in the third quarter of the year, according to new data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC US. Year-over-year, third-quarter ad revenues were up an impressive 18%; that's 6% better than the second quarter of 2012. Driving growth is a fundamental behavioral shift on the part of online consumers, according to Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “Consumers … are no longer passive, but are active participants in contemporary media online, through social media, and on-the-go with mobile," he said. "Sustained growth in Internet ad revenue, despite economic headwinds, is a testament to the value marketers get from using digital media," adds Sherrill Mane, senior vice president of research, analytics and measurement at the IAB. During the first half of 2012, online ad revenues climbed to an all-time high of $17 billion -- representing a 14% increase year-over-year. During the first half of the year, mobile generated significant growth -- up 95% to $1.2 billion from $636 million in the comparable 2011 period. Digital video saw an increase of 18% year-over-year, bringing just over $1 billion in revenue in the first half of the year compared to nearly $900 million in the first half of 2011. Search revenues in the first half of the year totaled $8.1 billion -- up 19% from nearly $6.8 billion during the same period in 2011. David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said he expects digital advertising to continue its positive trajectory “with incredible momentum,” as it heads into the seasonally strong fourth quarter.
As part of its recently launched Digitas Labs initiatives, Digitas this morning announced a partnership with New York University’s Movement Lab, a leading academic research initiative focusing on the analysis and animation of “human movement.” As part of the partnership, the Movement Lab will create a 3D “motion capture lab” in Digitas’ New York office, enabling the agency to research and develop applications for digital marketing and advertising. Digitas said the deal marks the launch of a new “Partnership Program,” in which the Digitas Lab will help incubate technology start-ups and/or educational institutions developing innovative digital applications. “We’re evolving a new visual language around movement and what can be explored and navigated,” Digitas North America CEO Colin Kinsella stated, adding: “The ability to incubate new, content-rich brand-related projects using 3D motion capture technology opens up a whole new lane of innovation that has, until now, only scratched the surface.” Potential marketing applications for the technology include the creation of live-action experiences for sports and entertainment fans, new types of "deep content" Web search experiences, and in-store body-language kiosk applications.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held a lottery in Los Angeles this week to decide on which of the proposed new top-level domain names will become the first to go live. Among the banks, media companies and Internet companies, Google applied for 101 and Amazon, 76. There were more than 900 applications for generic names like shop, news, music, and movies. The organization released the application list in June. Just as brands began to feel comfortable with online marketing and advertising, the Internet will fundamentally change as domain names get released, said Jennifer Wolfe, president at Wolfe Domain, a digital brand strategy advisory firm. Amazon, Google and Microsoft were among the companies with "low numbers," meaning these companies will begin to release their domain names by Q4 2013. Other big brands were Wal-Mart, Transformers, Showtime, Dish Network, Chase, Capital One, American Express, Go Daddy, Cisco, and McDonald's. This means consumers will open a browser and type in www.bigmac.mcdonalds. The shift from dot-com to thousands of TLDs will begin in 2013 and continue through 2014. The money and power behind the brands will change the way consumers navigate the Internet. "Half of the world's top consumer brands will move consumers away from dot-com and into their own top level domains," Wolfe said. "Then we have Google and Amazon making a major play for a specific space, and they're going to move people away from dot-com and into dot-google, dot-youtube, dot-kindle, and dot-amazon." Brands like Chase will benefit by owning the name. It should give consumers a sense of security that they are banking with the real company and not on a fraudulent site. Luxury goods companies like Coach could run campaigns that push consumers to only trust dot-[brand names], rather than dot-coms. Aside from creating a sense of security, Wolfe said owning the TLD allows brands to better track data by customizing the site's architecture. How will TLDs change search engine marketing, paid search and optimization? "Everything will change about search, Wolfe said. "Algorithms will change, relying more on what I refer to as ZIP codes," she said. "Search engines will start to categorize the Internet based on these top-level domains."
Mobile gaming and pharmaceutical ads may seem to be an unlikely combination, but new data from Jumptap shows that pharma ads running in games on its ad network saw the highest increase in click-through rates of any ad category in November. Click rates for pharma ads increased 315% in mobile game apps compared to rates for the category on average. Click rates for ads run by game companies also did well, increasing almost 200%. Rounding out the top-five-performing ad verticals in the gaming channel were retail, with click rates up 35%; automotive, 17%; and sports retail, 9%. The fact that pharmaceutical marketers are focusing on the mobile gaming category underscores that the gaming audience is no longer limited to teens and twentytsomethings. “It’s a very broad audience in gaming,” noted Matt Duffy, VP of marketing at Jumptap. According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average age of gamers overall in 2012 was 30, with 47% female. ComScore estimates about 80 million people in the U.S. play mobile games, with a third playing almost every day. Duffy points out that some of the pharma campaigns running on Jumptap’s network last month were aimed at reaching a younger demographic. The Jumptap study released today also singles out Washington, D.C., as the capital of mobile gaming. The city had the highest concentration of gamers, based on ad requests in games per capita. With a weekly average of 29 gaming ad requests per resident, its average was nearly five times that for any of the 50 states. New Jersey, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were among states with the most avid gamer populations. When it comes to smartphone real estate, iOS had the edge over Android, with the Apple mobile platform accounting for 52% of gaming traffic on the Jumptap network compared to 47% for Android. iPhone, iPad and iPod make up the top three devices for game play. Android-based devices, however, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Droid Razr and Kindle Fire rounded out the rest of the top 10 devices in gaming traffic. Prime time for gaming across platforms is afternoon and evening, with those periods together accounting for 68% share of traffic on a given day. Jumptap suggests advertisers use day-parting to capture the most attention during peak gaming times. Marketers that advertised in Angry Birds over the Black Friday weekend might also have benefited from a surge in audience. For the second year in a row, Jumptap looked at how much people were playing the popular game around Walmart stores. It found the volume of play peaked at 11 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving and at 5 a.m. as eager shoppers waiting in line flocked to Angry Birds as a welcome diversion.
The percentage of advertisers who say their demand for media is improving has hit its highest mark since May, according to the year-end edition of a monthly tracking study published by WARC, the London-based aggregator and publisher of marketing and media research. The index for “global trading conditions,” or demand for buying media, showed “significant improvement” -- rising to a 57.1, up from 53.4 in November. The index is derived by taking the percentage of marketing executives who report that conditions have improved versus those who reported it was either down or unchanged. An index of 50 is the dividing line marking a net improvement between overall expansion and contraction. December marks the highest point in WARC’s global trading index since May. WARC’s trading index rose to 61.1 for the Americas, followed by 55.6 for Asia-Pacific and 54.1 for Europe. According to WARC, an index of 50 represents no change, while an index over 60 indicates “rapid growth.” The trading index mirrors the sentiment among marketers in WARC’s overall Global Marketing Index, which also takes into account overall marketing budgets and staffing. There too, the Americas are leading the global marketplace. While WARC’s overall is a 52.5 globally in December (up from 50.1 in November), the Americas expanded 3.6 points to a 56.8, while Asia-Pacific ticked up 0.3 point to 51.5 and Europe expended 1.5 points to a 49.7. "The outlook for global trading conditions is positive according to the December data, but this confidence has not carried over to budget setting,” noted WARC Data Editor Suzy Young, adding: “There remain a number of risks to future global economic growth and marketing strategies are, consequently, defensive."